What Falls from View? On Re-Reading Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise

Abstract

‘Reading is a visual practice. It always involves a scene. What scenes do white readers of Plains of Promise gaze upon as they hold its pages in their hands? If the visual field is always structured by desire —in the words of Parveen Adams, ‘I enjoy what I see and I see what I enjoy’ (111) - then a question insists: what scenes can white readers see when we read an Indigenous-signed text such as this one? What scene will our desires produce, and what might fall from view?’ (Introduction, p. 70)

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Published 1 November 2010 in Volume 25 No. 4. Subjects: Australian literary criticism, Reader response, Reviews, Textual analysis, Writer-reader relations, Alexis Wright.

Cite as: Ravenscroft, Alison. ‘What Falls from View? On Re-Reading Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise.’ Australian Literary Studies, vol. 25, no. 4, 2010, doi: 10.20314/als.564e7a4418.